In an interesting story announced by the club we have now formed a coaching partnership with Hangzhou Greentown in the Chinese Super League.

It’s a deal which has been struck between new Club President Atsushi Nomiyama and his friend (the two went to Waseda University together) ex-NT Coach Takeshi Okada who is currently Player Development advisor having coached the club for the last 2 seasons.
Okada is someone I think did a good job during his time as NT-coach and is a very positive person to be linked to the club in some capacity.

The deal means that we will send 4 coaches over to China to work with the club on developing players, and in return will receive 60 million yen.
This looks to me to be a very good deal for Avispa. 60 million yen (about US$600,000) will go a long way towards the financial rebuilding which is going on at the club, and I would guess is more than any of the sponsorship deals we have received so far.
To get the shirt front sponsor would probably cost more than that, but apart from that it is the biggest new income stream to come into the club.

To put the figure into some sort of perspective I would say the top earners at the club (Koga, Sakata, Jogo) are probably on salaries in the region of 15 to 20 million yen.
We have a decent squad at the club now, so the extra money coming in could go towards getting 2-3 key players to really improve the team.

In addition to sending coaches over I would be interested to see what other deals could be made with this partnership.
The Chinese Super League has some money floating around in it; when Dario Conca went there he was the 3rd highest player in the world behind Messi and Ronaldo. To a lesser extent Greentown themselves have been able to spend money to bring Ivorian Davy Claude Angan in from Norway (a player I guess would walk into our first team), and interestingly have a Slovenian link themselves with midfielder Luka Zinko arriving at the club.

If players needing a change in scenery could come over here for a half season we could also send players over there. We have sent Hatamoto up to Kanazawa, and Ushinohama needs more games than he is getting at the moment too. With the ex-NT coach and 4 Avispa coaches going over there it could be a very good opportunity for players to get some games and still be watched by coaches linked to the club.